The Greatest Mystery
by Miss. E. Thompson
Summary: The BAU shows up knocking on Bobby's door asking questions about the supposedly dead Sam and Dean. In an attempt to keep the FBI searching for answers in the wrong places, Bobby gives them a view into the lives of Sam and Dean.


_Bang bang bang_

Bobby grumbled as he looked up from the book he had been reading through. He leaned to look out the window but couldn't see who was outside.

_Bang bang bang_

Bobby grumbled some more as he shoved some papers into the book to mark his spot and started rolling himself away from his desk.

_Bang bang bang_

"I'm coming, god damn it! Give me a damn minute!" Bobby yelled as he rolled through the living room toward the door. When he finally got to the door he threw it open and glared at the two men standing on his porch. Both were in suits and Bobby could see the guns and badges on their hips. They looked a little surprised when they took him in, obviously not what they were expecting.

"What the hell do you want?" Bobby asked as he crossed his arms over his chest.

The older looking of the two took out his badge and showed Bobby.

"I'm Agent Rossi, this is Agent Hotchner. We're with the FBI. We'd like to ask you a couple questions."

"About what?" Bobby demanded. He hadn't gotten a phone call from anyone about the FBI getting too close and the boys hadn't been in trouble for a while, for all the FBI knew, Sam and Dean were dead.

"We've come across some evidence that points to you knowing Sam and Dean Winchester." The younger of the two, Agent Hotchner, said stiffly. Bobby opened his mouth to reply, but Agent Hotchner continued.

"We confirmed this by talking to some of your neighbors and they said they had indeed seen an old black impala here on several occasions and seeing two men matching Sam and Dean's description around town." The agent finished and Bobby set his mouth in a thin line.

"Well sounds like you think you know everything. What the hell are you doing bugging me?" Bobby scowled.

"Agent Rossi and I are both part of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, we study killers and use the information to catch other killers. We wanted to ask you questions about Sam and Dean since you seem to have known them quite well and we hope to use the information should anyone else start killing with similarities in their crimes." Bobby grunted at the agent, he glanced at the old agent and noted his blank expression, but also noted an odd look in his eye that made Bobby think he wasn't the same as the other agent. Rossi didn't seem like the cut and dry FBI agent like Hotchner did if the lack of a tie and undone button on his shirt said anything and the way he seemed more relaxed than Agent Hotchner who stood like he a corn stalk stuffed up his ass. Rossi was here for knowledge, while Hotchner was here on an assignment.

Bobby weighed the pros and the cons. Anyone else the boys had been around was either dead or wouldn't know what to keep out of the conversation to keep other hunters off the FBI's radar. Plus these two seemed like the persistent type and would probably arrest him on some bogus charge and drag him down to the Sheriff's office to question him. Jody Mills was helpful now that she was in the know, but she definitely wouldn't put her badge on the line especially when it was the feds just being nosy and they weren't really looking for the boys.

"Fine, but I have to make a phone call first. I'm expecting company in about an hour and it seems you're gonna keep me tied up for a while." Rossi nodded and stepped inside when Bobby backed out of the way a little. Bobby showed them to the living room and then rolled into the kitchen to get the phone and call the boys. Didn't need them dropping by while the FBI was just being nosy, didn't need them getting caught, shot, or put back on the Most Wanted List.

"Hello." Dean answered after a couple rings.

"Hey Rufus, just wanted to let you know that I'll be a little occupied here for a while and that I need to reschedule your visit." There was a long pause before Dean replied.

"Bobby, you called Dean not Rufus."

"I'm aware. Got some surprise visitors and I'll be busy this afternoon."

"What kind of 'surprise' visitors?" Dean asked and Bobby could hear that he was worried.

"The kind that flies out from DC."

"The FBI's at the house?" Dean asked and Bobby hummed.

"What you they want?" Dean asked.

"They got some questions about the boys. Don't want to keep them waiting too long. Talk to you later Rufus." Bobby said and Dean hurried to get in the last word.

"Be careful Bobby." Bobby hummed again before hanging up the phone and returning to the two agents in his living room.

"Your company alright with rescheduling?" Rossi asked as Bobby rolled back into the room.

"Yeah, just Rufus. He stops by every now and again to make sure I haven't off myself." Both agents seemed alarmed by the phrase, but Bobby kept his face neutral as he moved to sit in front of them while the two agents sat uncomfortably on his lumpy couch.

"So, what all do you want to know?" Bobby asked and Rossi shifted.

"How about, how long had you known Sam and Dean?" Rossi asked and Bobby took a second to think.

"Well, let's see I met their daddy first, I think it was 1986 when he stopped by for the first time. We chatted a bit and it was a while before he came back and brought the boys with him. Sam was about 3 or 4 and Dean had to have been 7 or 8 at that point." The two agents raised eye brows at hearing that Bobby had known the boys for much longer than they had anticipated and had even known their father.

"So you knew their father. What was John like?" Hotchner asked.

"John was not an easy man to get along with. He was harsh and blunt and if you said anything that he didn't like he would throw tantrums to make a two year old proud. He was an asshole on a good day and absolute bastard on a bad one. But for those boys he was a drill sergeant and they looked up to him like a god." Bobby noted Rossi had taken out a note pad and had started taking notes.

"We've looked at John Winchester's military record, he was never a drill sergeant." Hotchner said as he scrutinized Bobby. Bobby sent Hotchner a glare before speaking.

"You came to ask me questions and you ain't even listening. I never said that John was a drill sergeant for the military, I said for those boys he was."

"What do you mean by that?" Rossi asked, pen at the ready.

"It means, that John didn't treat his children as children. As I'm sure you know Sam and Dean had a mother at one point and she died. When Mary died, something in John snapped. He was a man on a mission and because he didn't have any family he could fall back on to take Sam and Dean in, he took them on the road with him. Sam and Dean were no longer 6 months and 4 years old, they were soldiers in training and John was molding his command as a drill sergeant would for any army. Those boys were taught orders and punished when they stepped out of line and John trained them not just physically, but mentally too." Bobby stated. Rossi had gained a look of sadness while Hotchner had returned to his blank expression.

"So their childhood was boot camp." Rossi stated and Bobby shrugged.

"Give or take. I tried to make lifer easier for them when they were here. Taught them how to play baseball and let John dump them here so they could be kids while he went out on his 'missions' by himself. Of course that was only till Dean was 12, then John started taking Dean along with him. Dean was a good kid, he fought to keep Sam out of their father's obsession for as long as he could and kept John at bay as long as he could, but Sam only got a few extra years. John started taking him along too when Sam was 14. The day John told me about his plans to take Sam along I told him he was making a mistake and we got into it. He packed up the boys and left while I went for my gun. I'm not proud of it, but I threatened to riddle him with bullets if I ever saw him again and I never did."

"You could have called the cops, gotten CPS involved." Agent Hotchner stated with a sneer and Bobby glared at the man.

"No I couldn't. What was I going to tell them? That John was a bastard who treated his kids terribly? Sure they might have looked into it, but John was good at acting normal and neither of those boys would have said a word against him for fear of being separated in the system. He never beat them, starved them or did anything besides be crazy and treat them like soldiers. All CPS would have found was that he was a single father who was strict and liked to take his boys hunting. Last I hear, they don't take away your kids for that." Bobby snapped as he continued to glare at Agent Hotchner.

"Aaron." Rossi said and Agent Hotchner took his eyes away from Bobby to look at Rossi.

"Maybe you should head outside. I can finish up the interview with Mr. Singer." Hotchner looked like he was going to protest when Rossi spoke again.

"I could always call Morgan and have him drive in from town to help." Hotchner closed his mouth and gave a stiff nod and nodded to Bobby before showing himself out.

"I'm sorry about that. Aaron's a good agent, but he tends to see things in black and white and his bed side manner needs a little work." Rossi offered and Bobby scoffed.

"I'd say." Rossi turned back to the task at hand.

"You said John came out here, that he sought you out, why?"

"Well I know the boys didn't keep it a secret that they believed in monsters." Bobby said and Rossi nodded.

"Well, John did too and so do a lot of people. I'm sure you and Agent Hotchner took the time while I was on the phone to scout out the room. All these books are on what you'd probably call the occult and mythology. John had been seeking help from a former friend of mine and he'd been sent my way. You see some of us in the circle John socialized with had our own little niche's if you will. I've got a little bit of everything which is unusual for our type, the friend that sent John was some what of a specialist in vampire lore and I know a man who focuses on werewolves and another on ghouls." Bobby explained and he could see that he was losing Agent Rossi.

"You're not a believer, are you Agent?" Bobby asked and Rossi cleared his throat.

"'Fraid not." Bobby chuckled.

"That's alright. I know they say that knowledge is power, but sometimes ignorance is bliss. If I had my way I'd go back and pick ignorance in a heartbeat." Bobby said and his eyes landed on an old picture of him and Karen that remained on the bookcase exactly where she'd placed it all those years ago. Rossi cleared his throat again and Bobby brought his attention back to him.

"What was it that made your friend send John to you?" Rossi asked.

"It all leads back to Mary." Bobby said, gaining a quizzical look from Rossi before he continued.

"I'm sure you've looked over how Mary died and found that the fire was unexplained. The fire department claimed it was electrical, but we both know that's what they call it when they haven't got a clue. Well John swears that he saw a figure in the fire when he'd gotten himself and the boys out, but no remains were discovered in the house after the firemen finally put out the fire, not even Mary's. John had more questions then answers and someone John knew way back when sent him to a psychic who told him that it had been a demon that had killed his wife and tainted his home." Bobby said, Rossi was finally starting to understand where the mythology was playing into the Winchesters and their thinking. They were raised to believe these things and their father obviously trained them to take it out.

"That psychic sent John to someone who she knew and they sent him to someone else till he ended up here."

"He sent John here because you're the jack of all trades?" Rossi asked and Bobby chuckled.

"Yes and no. I have a little bit of everything in here, just the majority of my collections is based on demonology and that's what John wanted. His main goal was to track down the demon that killed Mary, but he was more than happy to kill anything else he found along the way. And that's how he raised Sam and Dean, he wanted them to know everything about what lurked in the dark and how to kill it. That was his mental training for them, John would have those boys research with him for hours, even days till they got the answer they were looking for." Bobby looked around the room before spotting what he was looking for, he rolled himself over to a particular stack of books and pulled one out before rolling back over to Rossi and handing it to him.

"Sam learned to read from that book at that desk." Bobby said as he pointed to his desk in the corner." Rossi put down his notepad as he examined the book of demon lore that Bobby had handed him. Rossi was now fully away of just how off his rocker John Winchester was if this had been his idea of learning material for a young child, flipping through the first couple pages Rossi spotted words that even he didn't know and probably didn't want to know the meaning of.

"That's why when Sam called me when he was 17 and asked me if he could put down my address on his college applications I said yes. John had his hooks into those boys pretty deep, deep enough that Dean never thought about leaving, but Sam had quite the rebellious streak and I knew that if he could get himself into a college then he could free himself from John. And Sam did, he called once a week till I got his acceptance letter from Stanford. They gave him a full ride and everything, Sam had me send back his commitment papers and I relayed everything the college sent."

"Then what happened?" Rossi asked. Rossi already knew future events and that at some point the brothers got back together and never looked back.

"I never counted on Sam leaving his brother behind, well, more like I didn't expect Dean to let himself be left behind. Dean's number one order had always been to protect Sam and Dean had made good on the order since he was 4 years old. When Sam broke the news to John and Dean, John went ballistic and told Sam that if he left, he couldn't come back. Dean was stuck between a rock and a hard place, going with Sam or remaining loyal to his father. My best guess is that Dean thought Sam could protect himself well enough at college that he could stay with his father and make sure John didn't get himself killed on one of his missions."

"Are you saying that Sam and Dean were fully aware that John was crazy?" Rossi asked surprised. He and the team had worked under the assumption that Sam and Dean had lived in their father's delusion and didn't understand the real world, the world outside of the monsters and the killing.

"Aware that he was obsessed, yes, but to think of John as crazy, no. John had trained them to see the monsters where others missed them, so they saw most of what John wanted them to see, but not everything. Even Dean as loyal as he was, knew that John existed in a different plane of belief then they did. Dean used John's journal as a bible, but he only read the parts that he needed to. Kinda like how some people are with their religions, they accept parts of the belief, but don't see its teachings as law." Rossi nodded, when Bobby put it like that he could understand it better than when Bobby had been retelling the craziness that Rossi couldn't wrap his head around.

"So what brought the boys back together?" Rossi asked and Bobby took a breath.

"Dean showing his loyalty made John loosen the reigns if you will, he let Dean go on his 'missions' alone while John would go on a different one. If it was something that John thought they couldn't do on their own then they would met back up and work together, but other than that Dean was pretty much existing on his own as a drifter. It had been years since Sam had gone to college when John suddenly dropped off the grid. He hadn't contacted Dean and he stopped talking to some of his other information sources. After a couple weeks he left Dean a voice mail that they were all in danger and that he needed to go get Sam. Dean tried to keep Sam out of it for a little while before he realized that he needed his brother if he was ever going to track down his father. Dean went to Stanford and convinced Sam that he needed his help. Sam went grudgingly, but Dean hoped they could find him where he'd last contacted him. Turns out that was a dead end and Sam wasn't willing to go back down the road that he'd been raised on and Dean caved and took him back to Stanford." Rossi was listening intently, he and the team were aware that this time when the brothers had met back up was the catalyst to the mental break down that turned them into serial killers.

"When Dean dropped him back off at Stanford, Sam found his apartment on fire, he knew that his girlfriend was probably still inside and went in to save her but he found her body in the bedroom, she'd been murdered and someone had set the apartment on fire. As Dean had been driving away he had noticed the smoke coming from the building and went back. He pulled Sam from the apartment before the fire could kill him. The similarities between Jess's death and their mother was what sent Sam spiraling just like his father. John's preaching was no longer just something that John believed and he played along with, now Sam was a die hard believer." Bobby explained and Rossi wrote down some notes.

"When did the boys track John down? There were some records of Sam and Dean being seen with an older man matching John's description mid-2006." Bobby thought about it for a second before answering.

"I think it was around February when the boys tracked him down. It wasn't too long after that the boys needed some help with Demon lore and they came here to get their research. They were here for a short time before going back on the road and met up with their father. Next thing I know I'm getting a call from Sam that they'd been in some bad accident. John and Sam were banged up pretty bad, but were going to be fine, but Dean had taken the brunt of the injuries, he had bleeding in his brain and the doctors were sure that he wasn't going to wake up, but Dean showed them. He woke up and made one hell of a recovery, I'd just gotten down there and was hooking up the car to bring back here when I got word that John had keeled over. A bad heart attack. Doctors said that he was probably dead before he hit the floor." Rossi looked surprised when Bobby mentioned John's death.

"John's dead?" Rossi asked and Bobby looked at the agent quizzically.

"Yeah. You didn't find that in all your research?" Bobby asked and Rossi shook his head.

"No, we've had agents and analysts looking for John since the report came through about Sam and Dean dying in that explosion. That's how we found you." Bobby chuckled and shook his head.

"You've been looking for a dead man for quite some time then."

"What were the boys like after John's death?" Rossi asked. He and the team would have to reevaluate their profile now that they knew John had been dead since early in their spree of killings. The fact that John hadn't even been in contact with them for the bank heist would definitely change aspects of their profile at the very least. The team had been working under the assumption that aside from the obvious delusion that the Winchesters lived by that John had been in charge and running everything from behind the scenes.

"Well, how can anyone take the death of their father? John didn't teach those boys how to handle their emotions, so it was rough going for a while. Dean threw himself into fixing his car and Sam threw himself into the mission. They both tried channeling their grief but they butted heads on more then a couple of occasions. I think the hardest thing for Dean was learning to live without his dad. John had been the man in charge for so long and sure Dean had been on his own for a while but he wasn't like Sam. Sam had been away from John for years and knew how to keep moving when his father was no longer standing over him or watching from the side lines. I think the hardest thing for Sam was accepting that he couldn't take back some of the things he'd done while John was alive. Sam and John had butted heads constantly since Sam was 10, he was an inquisitive kid and he wanted to know and understand everything and that irritated John to no end when he saw following orders as a life or death matter. Dean told me that Sam and John had gotten into an argument right before John dropped from his heart attack. Sam hated to think that the last thing John experienced with Sam was an argument when both were mad and said things they didn't mean, Sam loved his dad and it killed him to think that John might have thought that he hated him when he died." Rossi nodded, but he was having a difficult time understanding everything that Bobby was telling him. Sam was aware of John's delusion, but followed him anyway, and even while doing so questioned and argued? That wasn't normal when it came to killers who worked together. Who was Rossi kidding, nothing about this profile had been normal. Usually when killers worked together there was one dominate, an alpha if you will, and the other person or persons followed blindly. Rarely did they question and it was even rarer for them to argue, at least not without them ending up dead.

This profile had Rossi's head spinning. The Winchester profile was all over the place. The change from John running the shots, to Dean and occasionally Sam, to the questioning, the arguing and the shifts in crimes. These men were all over the board and he prayed for his sanity and for those of others that there was never a case like theirs again. Nothing made sense and it was driving David crazy. The Winchesters and their relationships were complicated and even hearing it all from a man that had been close with them for decades didn't help to clear up much of what made the brothers tick. David and the others always tried to think like the killers, but the longer they worked on this profile the more difficult it was becoming. There were details that not even a trained FBI agents like David and Hotch could catch and put into play when it came to this case.

David looked at the man sitting before him for a long minute before settling on what he wanted to say. There were so many things he knew he could ask, Mr. Singer had been willing enough to share the details that he knew and David knew that he was telling the truth, he could see it in the way that Mr. Singer held himself and how he talked, plus the boys were dead and David assumed that Mr. Singer thought the questions harmless since they were already gone. David was well aware that if they had come to Mr. Singer while Sam and Dean had still been alive, that they probably wouldn't have gotten the information that he'd gotten today, he probably would have lied and left things out to protect them. Mr. Singer had obviously cared a lot for the brothers as a softness came into his features when he talked about them and then the anger and malice he spoke with when he talked about John and how he'd treated his sons while they were growing up.

"I just have one more question for you." David said and Bobby looked relieved that the FBI was finally going to leave.

"Yeah?" Bobby encouraged.

"What do you think triggered Sam and Dean to commit the crimes they did?" David could see that Bobby wasn't surprised by the question, but he still took a moment to think about it before answering.

"Ultimately. I think it was loyalty." Bobby said and David raised an eyebrow. It was an answer that he hadn't been expecting.

"What do you mean by loyalty?" David asked and Bobby sighed as he slumped into the back of his wheelchair.

"Their crimes started when they were young and following their father. They did as he said out of loyalty to the only family they had left and once he was gone they continued out of loyalty to each other. Sam continued because Dean was loyal to their father's mission and after John died, Dean continued because he was loyal to Sam and Sam wasn't going to let their father's crusade die now that he understood. Their loyalty for each other just got more and more complex as they got wrapped more and more into the world their father had raised them in, they had nothing else to fall back on." David nodded, he thought that in some warped way that made sense and after hearing the horrifying way that the boys had been raised he could see how it might have made sense to them, even though it didn't make sense to those like David and the BAU team. David hoisted himself off the lumpy old couch and tucked his notepad into the pocket of his suit jacket before holding out his hand to Bobby.

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Singer." Rossi said and Bobby nodded as he shook David's hand.

"I'll show myself out." David said and Bobby nodded again before watching David leave the room. David walked out the door and across the porch before he saw Aaron standing with his back toward the house and looking out toward what seemed to be an endless lot of old cars and scrap metal. Aaron looked away and headed toward the SUV as David stepped off the porch and onto the dusty driveway leading out of Singer's Salvage.

"Get anything useful?"Aaron asked as he and Rossi pulled away from the property.

"I think so." David said.

"But I'll wait until we have the team assembled before sharing what Singer told me."Aaron nodded and didn't say another thing for the rest of the drive. David almost felt haunted as they drove further away from Singer Salvage, he had this feeling a couple times before. The knowledge that you've stood on the same land, in the same spot as a killer and yet something is escaping you even as you see everything they did.

Even with the new information that Rossi had gained from Bobby the team still was unable to create a profile that didn't lead to more questions then answers. Even as some team members filtered out and were replaced by others the profile remained unfinished and haunted David from where it sat in his bottom desk drawer.

The case was reopened a couple years later when two men matching the description of the Winchester brothers were filmed in footage of a bank robbery. David even took a chance, hopping on a plane back to Sioux Falls to talk to Robert Singer again only to find the blackened remains of the man's house when he'd driven onto the property. David had then driven to the local sheriff's department and been informed that Singer Salvage had been burned a couple months prior and Mr. Singer had turned up a while later with a gun shot to the head.

David remained at the FBI long enough to see the case go cold once again. David felt that this case would be the one case to go down in history as being unsolvable even with all the new technology that was making it possible to solve so many cold cases. Deep down David knew there was something about this case that he and the rest of the FBI didn't understand that stood in their way of ever being able to solve the case and creating an accurate profile. On his last day, as David was packing up his desk, he pulled out the case file and blew the dust off it that had grown as it had laid untouched for years. David personally took the file down to the special room at Quantico that was dedicated to the yet unsolved cold cases and filed it before walking out of the building for good.

David knew that one day some up and coming agent would pick up the case again hoping to make a name for himself, but David knew and probably the rest of his team knew, the Winchester case would never be solved and would remain as one of the FBI's greatest mysteries.


End file.
